Chapter 4: The Weight of Failure
The night was restless. In the hazy world of his dreams, Alex kept seeing a shadow—a silent guardian who had covered him with warmth when the world wanted him to freeze. Who was it? Why did they care for a piece of filth like me? The question echoed in his mind until it became a loud, rhythmic thumping.
"Alex! Wake up! The distributor is screaming at the door!" Dadi Ma's voice broke through his trance.
He jolted awake. It was 8:00 AM. For someone who had spent years sleeping until noon, the sunlight felt like needles in his eyes. He stumbled out of bed, his coordination failing him as he tripped over his own feet. He was late—disastrously late.
The newspaper distributor was livid. "Is this a joke to you? People want their news with tea, not lunch! Get moving, you useless brat!"
Alex grabbed the heavy stack of papers, his thin arms trembling under the weight. He tried to mimic the other delivery boys, trying to flick the papers onto balconies, but his aim was pathetic. The papers would fly backward, hit a wall, or land straight into a muddy gutter. When he tried to pedal the rusty cycle Dadi Ma had found for him, his weak legs gave out. He crashed into potholes, his knees bleeding, the white sheets of news turning gray in the dirt.
Every house was a new battleground of insults. "Why so late?" "Are you drunk?" "Send someone competent tomorrow!" The words stung, but Alex was too numb to reply. His brain, damaged by years of instant gratification and "Cheap Dopamine," couldn't process the simple map of the neighborhood. He was lost in a maze of his own making.
It took him three agonizing hours just to deliver a hundred papers—a task that should have taken thirty minutes. He was a failure even at the bottom of the social ladder.
The shop owner finally had enough. He walked over to Dadi Ma's shack, his face red with anger. "I'm done, Aunty. This boy is a curse. He's slow, he's clumsy, and he's ruining my business. He's good for nothing. Don't send him tomorrow."
Alex heard it all. He didn't even have the energy to feel angry. He just crawled into the shadow of a parked truck, curled into a ball, and let the exhaustion take him. He was a broken machine, a man who couldn't even deliver a piece of paper without falling apart. As he drifted into a forced sleep under the truck, he wondered if the shadow from his dreams was finally done with him too The next morning, the sun felt like an accusation. Alex's body was a map of pain, but the distributor didn't care. "Listen, you worthless brat," the man spat, throwing a massive stack of 500 newspapers toward him. "We are short on staff today. You have to deliver all of these, and you have to do it now. If you fail today, don't bother showing your face again."
Five hundred. To a normal person, it was a heavy load. To Alex, whose muscles had withered away from months of neglect and addiction, it felt like carrying a mountain on his back. His legs shook as he loaded the papers onto the rusted cycle. Each pedal was a scream for mercy from his lungs.
Time was his greatest enemy. His slow, fogged-up brain struggled to navigate. Delivering even one paper felt like winning a war, but he had hundreds more to go. He pushed himself, sweat stinging his eyes, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Then he reached the final stretch—a narrow, treacherous lane filled with slippery mud and stagnant water. He knew he had to be careful. One slip and everything would be ruined. He gritted his teeth, gripping the handle with his trembling, sweaty hands. "Just a little more," he whispered to himself. "Just survive this."
But his body betrayed him. The sheer weight of the newspapers shifted, and Alex didn't have the strength to counter the balance. The cycle wobbled violently. In a slow-motion nightmare, he felt the tires slide through the slick mud.
He crashed.
It wasn't a soft fall. He hit the ground ha, the metal handle of the cycle snapping with a sickening crack. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the sight before him. The entire stack of 500 newspapers had landed straight into the filthy, black mud. The crisp white pages were now soaked in grime—ruined, useless, and beyond repair.
Covered in filth and bleeding from his knees, Alex dragged the broken cycle back to the agency. When the distributor saw the ruined heap of papers, his face turned a demonic shade of red.
"You... you absolute curse!" the man roared, his voice echoing through the street. He didn't just scream; he lunged at Alex, trembling with rage. "Do you have any idea what you've done? A thousand rupees worth of loss! You are a parasite! Get out of my sight before I kill you! Never come back! You are not fit for this world!"
Alex didn't fight back. He didn't even apologize. He walked away like a hollow shell, the man's insults echoing in his ears. He found a secluded corner behind a dumpster, hidden from the world. The crushing weight of failure was too much. The shame was suffocating him.
And in that moment of absolute defeat, his mind went back to the only 'friend' he knew—the cheap dopamine. In that filthy corner, driven by self-hatred and a desperate need to numb the pain, he fell back into his darkest habit. He sought refuge in the very thing that was killing him.
After the act of masturbation, the momentary chemical high masked his misery. His brain, exhausted from the struggle and the relapse, shut down. He didn't care that he was lying in the dirt. He didn't care that he had lost his only chance at a job. He closed his eyes and slipped into a pathetic, hollow sleep, a prisoner once again to his own decay The sun had already begun its descent when Alex dragged his weary, mud-caked body back to Dadi Ma's shack. He expected a storm of questions, or perhaps a scolding that would match the distributor's rage. But Dadi Ma remained silent. She saw the dried blood on his knees and the hollow look in his eyes. Without a word, she heated some water for him and placed a simple plate of food on the floor.
Alex ate like a ghost. He didn't taste the food; he only swallowed the bitterness of his own existence. For the next few days, he lived like a parasite. He would wake up late, eat whatever small portion Dadi Ma could afford, and then retreat into a corner to sleep or drown in his dark thoughts. He was waiting for the world to move, but he had no strength to move with it.
But even kindness has a limit when faced with poverty.
One evening, Dadi Ma sat beside him, her hands trembling as she clutched an empty grain jar. "Alex," she said softly, her voice heavy with a pain that wasn't hers. "Look at me, son. I am an old woman living on the edge of life. I wanted to help you, but my pockets are as empty as my stomach now. I don't have enough to feed both of us anymore."
Alex looked up, the reality of his burden finally hitting him.
"Why don't you go back home?" she continued, a tear tracing a path through her wrinkles. "Your parents... they must be waiting. I cannot keep you here, Alex. You don't work, you don't try, and I simply cannot afford to watch you rot while I starve. Please... find your own way."
It was the final rejection. The only hand that had reached out to him was now pulling away. Alex didn't argue. He didn't beg. He stood up, took his few belongings, and walked out into the cold night. He was a man without a name, without a home, and now, without a single soul who cared if he lived or died.
He wandered the streets like a zombie. He was so consumed by his inner misery that he became blind to the world around him. The honking of horns, the bright city lights, the chatter of happy families—it was all a blur. He felt like he was already dead, just waiting for his body to realize it.
He reached a main intersection. His mind was a fog of self-hatred. Where will I go? Who will take me? I am a zero. A failure. A mistake.
Suddenly, the screech of tires tore through the silence of his thoughts.
A car, speeding blindly through the night, slammed into him with a sickening thud. Alex felt his body fly through the air like a ragdoll. Time slowed down. He saw the stars one last time before his back hit the hard asphalt several meters away.
Everything went black. The pain was immense for a second, and then—nothing. Silence. His eyes closed, and his breath hitched. He felt his spirit slipping away, leaving behind the broken, addicted, and rejected shell of a boy he used to be. As the world faded into an abyss, a distant, ethereal voice seemed to call out from the darkness behind him, but Alex was already gone, drifting into a world where failure couldn't follow him.